With the publication of this volume, people started to pay
attention to what Ware was doing. While his anthology appearances had
been impressive and the first issue of the ACME Novelty Library had
been well received, the second issue of the Novelty Library was an eye
opener.

These mostly word-less strips, beautifully drawn and lovingly
designed not only made it very plain that Ware was a masterful
craftsman, but also that he was capable of doing things in the comics
medium that nobody had ever done before.

This work pushes the act of reading to the forefront.
Describing what these strips are «about» is somewhat beside the point
-- reading them is like reading poetry or listening to music. Themes
present themselves, shift, are repeated, and the whole weaves together
into something far greater than its parts.

Even though these magical stories open up many avenues for
interpretation, I think doing so might spoil it for other readers.
Instead, here's an overview of the contents of the issue:

Front cover.

Quite funny fake ad parodying those «Are you a weakling?» ads.

Two pages of typeset text -- editorial, letters, jokes -- all
as parodies of various genres.

21 pages of strips.

One page of fake ads, including a hilarious quarter-page «Jimmy
Corrigan» satire.

Ware has even left us negative people with something easy to
criticize -- the text pages aren't actually funny. They're amusing,
written in a «let's sneer at this, then» «ironic» manner, but only
occasionally does the humor go anywhere. To take an example -- the
parody of the «weakling» ad starts out rather funnily, but to me it
seems that Ware runs out of things to say about the subject before he
runs out of space he has to fill using that tiny typeface he uses.
Graphically it looks marvelous, but actually reading it is something
of a chore.

This is only a minor quibble, and the text does give the book a
fuller feel; the text pieces may be necessary ingredients for the
comic as an object.

I could spend a few more paragraphs trying out my thesaurus for a
hundred ways to say «this is really, really, really, really, like,
good», but I don't see what's the point. If you haven't bought it
yet, you must; and if you have, you already know what I mean.